How To Tweak GNOME 3 To Your Needs

I’ve written about GNOME 3 before, specifically how much I love it. I do not use any extensions or third-party tweaks whatsoever as GNOME 3 feels very complete for me out-of-the-box. However, some users aren’t so easy to please and their habits don’t quite mix with the overall design of GNOME 3, even after approaching it with an open mind. Until the project is more mature (3.2, 3.4 maybe), there are several workarounds to many of the common “problems” that I’ve seen users have with GNOME 3:

How do I use the old GNOME 2 UI?

Before I tell you how to enable the old UI, let me just say that the GNOME 2 UI is deprecated for various reasons and WILL NOT RECEIVE FUTURE UPDATES. The old UI is considered a “Fallback Mode” for users who cannot use the current UI and is not intended to be used any longer if your system is powerful enough to use the new GNOME 3 UI. I would highly recommend that you give the new GNOME 3 UI a chance for a week and wrap your head around the new concepts, shortcuts and features. If, after all of that, you still want to use the old GNOME 2 UI, you can enable the intentionally hidden “Fallback Mode” by doing the following:

Open “System Settings” in the Status menu at the top-right of the screen.

Click “System Info” in the System Settings window.

Click the “Graphics” tab on the side.

Flip the switch for “Forced Fallback Mode”.

In addition to this, there are some extensions that enable a more GNOME 2-like experience. Scroll down to read about them.

GNOME Tweak Tool

An easy, GUI method to configuring GNOME 3 is present in the form of the (semi-official) tool, GNOME Tweak Tool. Download and install it with these commands:

After it’s installed, run it with the “gnome-tweak-tool” command and customize GNOME in any of the following ways (lifted from the website):

Install and switch gnome-shell themes

Switch gtk themes

Switch icon themes

Change

The user-interface and titlebar fonts

Icons in menus and buttons

Behavior on laptop lid close

Shell font size

File manager desktop icons

Titlebar click action

Shell clock to show date

Font hinting and antialiasing

GNOME 3 does not officially support theming at the moment for the default UI, so you need the user-theme extension installed, which I mention below. As for GTK themes, there aren’t any other GTK3 themes available yet, so as soon as more are available theme support will be implemented.

How do I use my old window border themes?

GNOME 3, as of right now, does not let you change the default theme using a GUI option because they want a standard visual identity for GNOME 3, sort of how everybody knows a Windows or Mac desktop just by looking at it because of their strong visual identities. In addition to that, the designers and developers figured that it’s better to care about getting the fundamentals done right first, and allowing for more superficial concerns such as theming later. A method to change the window border theme is present though, but it is hidden. To change it, follow these steps:

Copy the theme to ~/.themes (that’s /home/you/.themes)

Open “gconf-editor”

Browse to desktop -> gnome -> shell -> windows on the tree on the left side of the window.

On the right, there’s an option for “theme”. Change it to the name of the window border theme you want to use and restart GNOME (Alt+F2, type “r”, hit enter)

GNOME Shell Extensions

GNOME Shell (the default desktop UI) has support for extensions (also called “Add-ons”), though support for them isn’t quite finalized yet. In order to use extensions now, you need to install the latest extensions from git. Here’s a list of all of the current extensions included in the repository (list taken from the README in the repository):

alternate-tab:
Lets you use classic Alt+Tab (window-based instead of app-based) in GNOME Shell.

alternative-status-menu:
For those who want a power off item visible at all the time, replaces GNOME Shell
status menu with one featuring separate Suspend and Power Off. Adds the ability to
hibernate as well.

auto-move-windows:
Lets you manage your workspaces more easily, assigning a specific workspace to
each application as soon as it creates a window, in a manner configurable with a
GSettings key.

dock:
Shows a dock-style task switcher on the right side of the screen.

drive-menu:
Shows a status menu for rapid unmount and power off of external storage devices (i.e. pendrives)

There are some other extensions as well that aren’t in the git repository as of yet that I find to be very nice, though I don’t actually use any of them. Four of these are currently distributed in a pack, while another must be downloaded from git. The pack of extensions contains these:

Applications Menu:
Turns clicking on the “Activities” button into a menu for Applications similar to GNOME 3. The overview still works with the hot-corner and Windows key.

Break Dynamic Workspaces:
Lets you set a fixed number of workspaces. Helpful for users who find dynamic workspaces annoying.

Move Clock:
Moves the clock between the status menu and the system indicators, like in GNOME 2 and Ubuntu Unity. I personally lik the clock in the middle, but I guess this frees the middle for extensions to use, like the next extension…

Panel Favorites:
Puts a copy of your favorites list on the panel, between the Activities button and the AppMenu. This is similar to launchers from GNOME 2 and other desktops.

To install these extensions, do the following (credit goes to WebUpd8):

The extensions will now appear in ~/.local/share/gnome-shell/extensions along with the others I mentioned. You can remove them individually if there are ones you do not with to use. Another extension that WebUpd8 pointed out is a “Workspace Indicator” extension which lets you switch workspaces using the mouse without opening the Overview. To install it, you need to clone from a git repository. First, make sure you have git installed, and do the following:

After installing any of these, restart GNOME Shell (Alt+F2, type “r”, hit enter). You should now have your extensions installed and functional.

If you were looking for more “hardcore” customization such as editing the GNOME Shell CSS files to customize it’s appearance, read this blog post (not mine). Some of the things that he does with GNOME 3 are really incredible and it shows how customizable GNOME 3 really is. In fact, some of these extensions come from his blog posts if I’m not mistaken. Enjoy, and I hope that these various tips helped you improve your GNOME 3 experience :)!

ok so i like gnome3 so far but there are some things that annoy me about it and maybe you can help (they are petty issues but annoy me none the less) the main one is having to go to the left side of the screen to get to activities then jot over to the right side to select whatever group i need to get in to find a particular app then hustle back the the other side of the screen (i make it sound like i am going across town) to click the giant app icon… is there a way to move the groups to the right side after you click activities/applications? also is there a way to rearrange the menu order of the applications? having All at the top is like info overload on my netbook… it’s just too much… i don’t mind a few icons but all is just insane… like i said they are petty but it really is frustrating and i don’t think i can get used to it… and i really don’t want to be ‘that guy’ who still likes the set up of windows 95 and how it was so 3l33t back in the day… bla bla bla… ok just thot i would ask cuz i am getting sleepy and lazy… thanx!

I can see the appeal of the Gnome 3 UI, and I consider myself a quite open-minded person. But I just downgraded back to Gnome 2, as I couldn’t get used to the look and feel of Gnome 3. It looks pretty, but I miss the line at the bottom of the screen, and I can’t stand the dock thing they’re implementing in the applications folder. It’s much too similar to that of the new Ubuntu design. I’ll keep checking up on Gnome 3’s progress though, I don’t want to be one of those people stuck forever on Gnome 2, he he.

It’s possible to do something *sorta* like that with an extension, but it uses the Application Menu on the top bar instead. The GNOME team is looking in a rather different direction and are currently doing research on how to best do this. Go here for examples: (Sorry it didn’t show up the first time)

Relative to things like being stable and having the bare minimum of features that matter the most, theming is superficial. It’s really nice to have, of course, but it isn’t necessary at all, unless you’re talking about theming for accessibility (which GNOME 3 supports by default, I believe).

You can also override / change the location / size of the hot corners.

For example, to make the entire bottom edge the hot corner for the message tray:
* Open /usr/share/gnome-shell/js/ui/messageTray.js using gedit (or your preferred editor)
* Search for “_setSizePosition: function()”
* At the bottom of the function (under the line “this._corner.y = Main.layoutManager.trayBox.height – 1;”) add the following lines:
// Make the hotconer the whole bottom edge
this._corner.x = 0;
this._corner.width = monitor.width;